Chief Justice Favors Transparency She Controls

 
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (Photo: California Courts)

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (Photo: California Courts)


The Courthouse News has some of the better coverage from a year-end press meeting with Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye, who still says she favors court transparency despite having led the successful effort to remove open-meeting requirements from legislation. Apparently she supports the rule if judges write it, with TCN reporting that “… while the chief justice lobbied against a bill requiring open meetings by Judicial Council committees, she said she always supported the idea but wanted the judiciary to have control over the language in the rule.”
 
She explained that: “Because I think there are different considerations with judges who are on the advisory committees that draft the proposals for council to consider. In the process of drafting those proposals and deciding if a proposal should even come to council, judges still in their judicial role speak about substantive issues of law…  we have a concern about the code of judicial ethics and what judges can and cannot say in the process of a heated argument in the development of a proposal versus what they can and should be saying publicly.” 
 
And of course she noted “… a new long-term fiscal plan for the courts that she hopes will persuade the governor to restore $1 billion in funding to the judicial branch over five years.” Read more here.